By The Skin Of Your Teeth
by Val-Creative
Summary: After Klaus turns twenty, Sir Reginald gives him a solo mission which means being escorted to a fresh crime scene and ordered to solve it before Klaus is allowed to leave for any reason. Believe it not, it's much harder to commune with the newly dead. They resist.


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Jumping through time a second time sucks, but Five was right about the worst of this. Klaus does not want to relive puberty again. He's good with this one '_Be Kind, Rewind_' moment in his own personal timeline.

Walking around with a 30-year-old consciousness in a teenage body? Absolute bullshit.

He nearly gets arrested outside the drug store when Klaus attempts to convince a self-righteous mother with a toddler to draw the cashier's attention — _"my mom told me to come get her groceries she ordered through the MyShop app, but that lady told me to get lost!"_ — and waits for the cussing to begin before Klaus steals the Jose Cuervo tequila off the counter, tucking it under his overcoat and strolling out proudly.

The undercover cop trails him by the crosswalk, frisking out the liquor bottle from Klaus's interior, fur-line pocket and marching him back to the drug store to apologize. Or he would be cuffed.

Not in a good way.

Sir Reginald hears about it, having Pogo confiscate all of Klaus's skin-mags, raiding his bedroom and the attic for secret compartments and hidey-holes for any trace of drugs or old, musty weed.

Klaus hasn't touched a damn thing since he got back. Except sipping a bottle of wine. Or two.

It does wonders for his concentration during the lessons and his Academy training, and Klaus feels stronger. He can kick the teeth out of an assailant just like when he had been fourteen. Five and everyone prepares to save Ben this time around, and to stop the apocalypse from happening a second time in all of existence, and it sounds _great_ in theory. Klaus isn't gonna hold his breath.

At age twenty, Sir Reginald grants him a solo mission for improving so quickly.

Yeah, right. It actually means his dad escorts Klaus to a fresh crime scene and prods him to commune with ghosts to solve it before Klaus is allowed to eat any meals today or use the restroom or _leave_.

So fresh that the yellow police tape is still up, fluttering against the air conditioning vents. What remains of victims bodies, gory and jellied, through the crimson-smeared windows hasn't entirely thickened or congealed. The smell wafting from the inside has a heightened, rancid tinge.

Klaus agrees to enter by himself, watching Sir Reginald be driven to another location in the Rolls Royce and pushing open the laundrymat door further. Hampers overflowing with jerseys and hand-woven quilts and tennis shoes, splattered with dark red blood. Klaus's mission suit crinkles as he side-steps one of the dead lying in a heap, her indigo-dyed curls pooling around her. She's missing her left ear.

He unzips the top of his 00.04 uniform-suit, abandoning the dark grey Nomex material onto the counter. The murders happened in violent succession around 11:45pm, and they arrived on the scene around 1am.

A grotesque, rubbery mask of a lamb sits in a wheeling-basket cart. Klaus plops himself in, throwing his legs over the cart's wiry edge, tugging on the psychopath's mask. He stares up at the blood-saturated message of '_you'd look good in a grave_' finger-painted directly to the wall.

Believe it not, it's much harder to commune with the newly dead.

They _resist_.

So here Klaus is lounging around, bare-chested, surrounded by so much carnage it may as well be the Evil Dead remake, wearing the killer's favorite and _worst_ fashion accessory they picked up on.

"Yoo_hooooo_~~…" Klaus singsongs, whistling between his teeth lowly and beneath the lamb-mask. He may not be scared of ghosts as much, but it fuckin' reeks. Like a pig slaughterhouse baking in Montana. So much for the air-conditioning when it blasts out heat. "We're all friends h_eeeeee_re~…"

The white florescent lights blink out. He tears off the rubbery mask, wide-eyed, as the lights return to normal. Smoke trickles out the vents, wispy and preternatural. Klaus's pulse quickens.

One of the victims takes form, a kind of pale bluish-grey, all over. Her indigo curls, moussed and frizzy due to the late night humidity, stick together in the gore and greyish-pink brain matter. She's around twenty-three or so, dressed in high-tops with bloodstained, white laces and a DLA university hoodie. Lavender stockings with gaping, thready holes exposing her light brown skin drizzling red.

"Hi. Hi there." Klaus scrambles to get out the laundry cart, showing her his hands, palm-up. "Can you see me?" The young woman doesn't respond, looking between the other corpses and Klaus, frightened. "My name is Klaus," he explains, whispering. "I'm here to help you. Can you tell me what happened?"

"_Help_…"

"Yeah, I wanna help…"

"_Help_…" she repeats to Klaus, mournfully, her dark eyes so, _so_ lost. He protests as she rushes towards him, hugging Klaus, sobbing and trembling against the middle of Klaus's warm, bare chest.

That's when he feels the icy, numb-tingling sensation of—_wait_—

Klaus stares down at her, astonished. She's not passing through him, like the ghosts always would, either swiping at him or pushing or trying to yank Klaus's arms when he ran away screaming in the mausoleums. But has Klaus ever fully materialized a ghost? Ben would tell him yes, but _THAT_ was—

Energy pulses and swirls colorfully blue, wrapping visibly around Klaus's shaking fingers.

The last of the two victims materialize, reaching out and clinging to Klaus. He can _feel_ their weight pressing to his sides. The man in his 40s, with athletic clothes and headphones — he moans quietly in Klaus's ear. There's gauze binding around his eyes, blocking part of his tear-streaked face. His bluish-gray hand skims up Klaus's crotch and his belly, hungrily, wishing for any touch-contact.

(And god, how _fucked_ is it that Klaus gets hard?)

Another man, wearing a Bugs Bunny tee and sunglasses, leans into Klaus's cheek, his opened, tingling lips mashing to him. He kisses and nips along to Klaus's sweaty temple, groaning, pleading.

Whispers in the dead language sound heavenly to Klaus's overwhelming senses, his dick fattening in his uniform-trousers when one of the victims gropes his thigh. They'll never feel anything like this ever again. He knows, and so do these emotionally-charged, lonely spirits.

They tremble and buck and clench until Klaus yelps, backing up and falling on his ass.

He hits his head against the counter-top, swearing. Blood splashes all over Klaus's forearms and his back. Freaking out, Klaus grabs one of the cleaner-looking towels and rubs off his skin, hurrying to yank on his discarded uniform-top and bursting out the laundromat, gasping, _ashamed_.

_Absolute bullshit._

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_TUA isn't mine. [whispers into the mic] I would not put it past Reggie to have set the whole thing up and planned their murders,,, he killed himself to bring them all together,,, he is not above murder,,,, it is about strategy to him, not empathy,,, not basic human decency or the sanctity of life,,,,,,, he probably wanted the apocalypse to happen and set it up,,,, thank you for reading my newest Hugo Award nominated fanfic dsfjngdgskjn and any thoughts/comments are deeply appreciated!_


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